Working 80 Hours a Week on the Frontlines and Doing a 28 Brighter Days Challenge

“I would come home after a 12-hour shift after barely eating during the day. Then I’d just have one big meal and a glass of wine without getting enough sleep.”

With a global pandemic going on, it’s easy to let your own health slip away when you’re taking care of patients on the frontlines. Andrea is a 49 year old healthcare worker who was eating just one meal a day before our 28 Brighter Days Challenge.

Through this challenge, she doubled her macros from 700-800 calories to 1500-1600 calories a day and lost an inch and a half from her hips! Now you might be thinking, how do you lose weight by eating more? Here’s what was going on in Andrea’s body.

Working long hours, Andrea’s body needed all the energy it could get from standing 12 hours a day. With just a 15 minute break, more times than not she would just get coffee. Since Andrea was only eating 700-800 calories a day, her body was in starvation mode and doing whatever it could to keep as much weight on her as possible. That combined with the lack of sleep and alcohol, her body needed some love and care!

After 28 Days, here’s what she has to say about our challenge:
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“I would recommend this to anyone. Sometimes people make the excuse they don’t have time, but you can do it. I feel SO MUCH better, mentally, physically and just with planning my day. I don’t think thank God the 28 days of the challenge is over, I still do the meal prep. It’s like mental muscle memory.”‍

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‍‍Q&A

What does a day in your life look like before and after our challenge?

‍“The biggest difference for me is wine. I used to come home and drink my glass of wine after not eating enough all day. These 28 days brought me back to clocking my food. Even though gyms aren’t open yet, this challenge made me feel like I was back at the gym and being held accountable by a CrossFit community.

I started making changes like putting a whole liter of water on my desk and drinking it throughout the day at work. Before, drinking alcohol was a way of coping with not eating all day, but drinking more water and eating properly has helped. Just being on a routine and not a diet changed the way I thought about my health.

Now I do meal prep every Sunday. Some people might think it’s boring but I like being creative and making things look pretty. It’s having a regime of great-tasting and looking things.”

What helped the most about doing the 28 Brighter Days Challenge?

“The most helpful part is that you can post whatever you want into the Facebook group freely. Everyone else doing the challenge could jump in, and we could contact Robyn or Stephanie. I loved that even if we come from different walks of life, we all have the same goal to feel better.

Some people might have specific weight loss goals, but I truly just wanted to feel better in my own skin! The important thing is everybody was so supportive of each other with changing our habits. Whatever your vice is (for me it’s wine, for someone else it might be smoking) we replace it with something else. Now I just do my 15 minutes of stretching instead of drinking.”

Is there anything else about your experience you want to share?

‍“BODZii definitely helps people feel like they aren’t on a diet. A diet is a horrible word when you’re almost 50 with two children and want to enjoy yourself. I just care about how I feel in my clothes and skin.

I have two grown daughters looking up to me, someone who hasn’t always been self-confident about her body. I want them to have a healthy image of what being gorgeous is. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about BODZii.”

Andrea Daniel is the winner of our House Chef Award during our 28 Brighter Days Challenge.
As an artist who’s worked with Obama and Oprah, she has an eye for colour and composition which she brings to her beautiful dishes! Here are some of the highlights:

Congratulations to Andrea for her progress so far and for staying strong!

If you want to be a part of a motivated community ready to make their health a priority, stay tuned for our fun and supportive heatlh challenge! Get updates on our Fall Challenge, prizing, and more here.